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How Did Dorothea Dix Treat The Mentally Ill In The 1800s

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In the 1800s, the mentally ill and prisoners were forced to live in wretched conditions and often were not even treated as regular citizens. Patients of mental institutions were operated on so they were more controllable. The mentally insane that did not live at home were kept in prisons, few were in faulty poorhouses, and even fewer were in hospitals. Many hospitals had mental wards, but they were inadequate for patients. In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix visited many prisons where the deranged were kept and found that these conditions were unsuitable for living quarters (“Dorothea Dix Biography”). The inhumane treatment of the mentally ill in prisons and asylums inspired Dorothea Dix to lead the struggle for reforms, and although she faced opposition, …show more content…

These hospitals set off an avalanche, causing new reforms all over the United States. This was phenomenal for the time period. Dix started out with only having one small victory, a stove placed in a room in a prison. This set off a series of new reforms that bettered the lives of the mentally ill and prisoners. In many states besides Massachusetts, hospitals were being set up to care for the insane in the United States. By the time she died, Dorothea Dix reformed about 20 different states that had new mental institutions and better living conditions for prisoners. Many of these states, such as New Jersey, previously did not have any sort of healthcare for the mentally disabled in any capacity, causing much surprise when the legislature voted for a state hospital devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Some states, like Massachusetts, had very little to do with the mentally disabled excepting the few hospitals that had run-down wards and the almshouses that would accept the mentally challenged, the poor, and the orphans. Because of Dix, many states were now more willing to care for the mentally ill and were making prisons and jails more suitable for living. Halfway through the 18th century, the United States was serving as a model for prisons. Dix was revolutionary in reforming prisons. She convinced states to invest in libraries, basic education, and more care for the men, women, and even children imprisoned in the jails and penitentiaries whereas abuse regularly occurred (Parry). Pennsylvania was a key role model for prisons all over the United States. This state’s prisons were known for having “two of the best prisons in the world” (“Prison and Asylum

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Institutionalization in the 1800’s was Dorothea Dix was a mover and shaker, who together with a few others in her era was responsible for alleviating the plight of the mentally ill. In the 1800's she found them in jails, almshouses and underneath bridges. She then began her major lobby with legislators and authority figures across the land, to get hospitals built in what was then known as the "Moral Treatment Era. " Things did get better, with ups and downs, of course. She visited widely, in the Midwest state hospitals in Independence and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and Winnebago in Wisconsin ca.

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Dorothea Dix Dorothea Dix was a girl who grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts to Joseph and Mary Dix. Dorothea Dix was most famous for her reforms in the prison system and upgrades in mental health facilities. These improvements altered women's rights and U.S. jurisdiction forever. Dorothea Dix also developed medical needs for patients throughout the U.S. This boosted health in asylums and prisons.

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One woman is described as, “clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment... unwashed [body] invested with fragments of unclean garments... irritation of body produced by utter filth an exposure incited her to t he horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches,”(Dix 5). Dix also describes how cages were a commonplace within almshouses by stating, “Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using [cages],”(Dix 4). In this manner, Dix is imploring the Massachusetts Legislature to take immediate action. By describing these wretched conditions, Dix gives evidence and reason for reformation. The indecent livelihood of the mentally ill brought to the surface by Dix brings to question the effectiveness of the current prison system in Massachusetts.

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She realized that she needed to challenge the idea that people with mental disturbances could be cured or helped. Dix soon began to investigate the treatment of the mentally ill in Massachusetts, and in 1843 submitted her first “memorial” to the state legislature. The memorial shows how Dix worked within the conventions of herself in public life and draws attention to the horrendous treatment of the mentally ill in prisons, almshouses for the poor, and asylums. Dix’s efforts to help the mentally ill led to building of about 32 institutions in the United

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Dorothea Dix was an American activist who created the first generation of American asylums. Dorothea Dix was also the superintendent of Army nurses during the Civil War. Dix was born in Hampden, Maine. She grew up in Worcester Massachusetts and was the oldest of three. Her parents Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow had deep ancestral roots in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

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Horrified by the results of her research, she took this to court and secured an order that said they need to have heat, and other basic living requirements. She started traveling to find out what conditions were like in other prisons, and in poorhouses. Dorothea crafted a document that was presented to the Massachusetts Legislature that increased the budget to expand the state mental hospital at Worcester. She still wanted to do more, so she toured the country and documented the conditions and treatments of patients in mental hospitals. She founded or added to asylums in: Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and North

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She investigated every mentally ill facility in Massachusetts and documented the conditions and treatments. This document was submitted to the state legislature in 1843 and passed quickly to get better conditions and a larger asylum for the mentally ill. The next two years Dix traveled to New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Maryland and did the same exact thing she did in Massachusetts to improve the

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Dix was also active at the federal level as well, pitching ideas to Congress, only to come one person shy of creating twelve million acres of land meant solely for the mentally challenged, blind, and deaf. Of course, this was discouraging, but it didn’t stop Dix from making a change and helping those in need. She traveled to Europe and was able to establish a new hospital with the help of Pope Pius IX, only to come back to America and lend a hand in the Civil War as “Superintendent of Nurses.” The fight for the mentally impaired did not stop though, as she continued to

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The conviction is continually deepened that hospitals are the only places where insane persons can be at once humanely and properly controlled (Dix 1843).” Values of doing right and advancing their country toward more humane ideals helped contribute to nationalism. Additionally, since women could finally be serious reformers, women all over the country felt more included, promoting pride in America as well as

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Their are around 500,000 mentally ill people that are put away in prisons and jails. In the documentary “The New Asylums”,Ohio's state prison system reveals the issues that are ongoing with mentally ill inmates. The major problem we have today is that no one is taking care of the people of these people. Most mentally ill people live by themselves with no family or friends to take care of them and they are off their medications. The mentally ill come in to prison on non violent offenses such as disturbing the peace, trespassing, etc. After leaving mental hospitals they usually end up on the streets and become homeless.

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False Imprisonment of Sane One big flaw in the system for the insertions was determining if a person was really insane or not. They did not have the technology and the knowledge to really figure that out yet. Due to this many people that were completely sane were sentenced to these institutions. One huge example of this inability to sort sane from insane was Nellie Bly. Nellie Bly was a reporter at the time that snuck into an asylum in order to uncover the truths.

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This preconceived notion could not be farther from the truth. In reality, these reform movements are idiotically placing a bandaid over the tremendous issue that the prison system is. An imbalance of reforms between women and men, unrestrained sexual abuse in women’s prisons, and tyrannical gender roles are just three of countless examples of how prison reform movements only create more misfortune and fail to provide any real solution to worsening prison conditions. Perhaps instead of conjuring up additional ideas on how to reform prisons, America’s so-called democratic society should agree upon abolishing prisons as a whole. This being said, it is crucial to identify ongoing issues in today’s society, understand how they contribute to unlawful behavior, and seek a solution.

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Before the emergence of asylums, the burdening of caring for and keeping mentally ill individuals at bay was a domestic responsibility, resting entirely on an individual’s loved ones and local parishes. One of the first recorded asylums in the world was London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, which admitted its first mentally ill patients in the early thirteenth century. Early hospitals were initially funded “in equal parts by a colonial grant and subscription.” Up until the late eighteenth century, treatment of the mentally ill was grounded on often privately run institutions built on commercial enterprise; there was little to no regard for patients. For almost a century after its emergence as a medical specialty at the turn of the nineteenth century, the field of psychiatry was limited to severely disordered, disabled, criminals, and socially deviant individuals confined to asylums, hospitals and madhouses.

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